New Post blogger Jim Laurence, anchorman for both TV Aspen and Your Radio (KUUR-FM) makes his debut on Aspen Post with the highlights from his broadcasts.
“Go West, Young Man! but Park at the Intercept Lot: Aspen's Transportation Dilemmas,” on exhibit at the Aspen Historical Society’s Wheeler/Stallard Museum, examines the history of transportation into and around Aspen from the Ute Nation through the present-day jet age. Included are displays on foot, animal, bicycle, ski, auto, bus, train and air travel, as well as the Entrance to Aspen issue and artifacts ranging from pioneer Charles Armstrong’s actual journals to a 10th Mountain Division winter outfit to a showcase of auto license plates dating back to the early 20th century. The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday.
The thing I love most about the Food and Wine festival here in Aspen is the famous people I’ve never heard of and would not know from Adam. It’s like going to the Super Bowl with no clue about frozen tundra—you should have stood in bed instead of taking up space in the stands.
A couple years back I was saving a chair at the Hotel Jerome for my fiancée when a woman took the chair for her husband without asking. She said something that indicated her husband was some kind of a big deal in the world of food, but I could not have cared less if he were Wolfgang Puck. It was our chair. I had saved the seat under the universal law found in the Constitution that decrees all men are created equal no matter how nifty you might be with pulled pork and coleslaw.
ASPEN, COLORADO—What does the little town of Harper Woods, Michigan, unremarkable in so many ways, have to do with the Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, Aspen’s own monarch with the $135 million manse in the beyond posh Starwood section of this mountain town?
Here in Aspen, in fact, the Prince is known as generous to local charities, kind to animals, and generous to a fault when his multiple wives hit the downtown mall with multiple plastic. He is also known to ski within a circle of bodyguards, and to rent out the downtown Isis theatre in toto so as to enjoy a movie of his choice in privacy.
In Harper Woods, in contrast, said Sultan is prince non grata, accused by the town’s employee pension fund of embezzling some $2 billion over 20 years as the go-between betwixt the Saudi government and BAE Systems of the United Kingdom.
The Con Man welcomes the Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboarding Club back to the program, then explains why the conventional wisdom that said Democrats would be damanged by the primaries was so completely wrong.
The Con Man can't help himself: he has to liken the Burlingate affordable housing scandal in Aspen to the neoconservatives who rule(d) Washington. What do they have in common? Both the local liberals and the Beltway conservatives felt they knew better.
Don't miss the call from former Aspen City Councilor Torre in the second half of the show.
I don’t get to Aspen City Council work sessions that often—who has time for comedy in these days of Food and Wine?—but the first hour or so of the work session on Burlingate and affordable housing was a doozie.
I came in during a Council meltdown Tuesday night and it took me a good twenty minutes to figure out that Mayor Mick Ireland, Jack Johnson, and Steve Skadron were squawking about the necessity of televising the session as bankrolled by Marilyn Marks, a member of the Citizens Budget Task Force, a group formed at the suggestion of Mayor Mick to his eternal regret. Marks, also a member of the affordable housing subcommittee, has done nothing but make their lives miserable, mainly by pointing out the Council and City staff has no clue about where the money goes or is going in affordable housing.
Higher than average snowpack has emergency management officials in Pitkin County, the city of Aspen and the towns of Snowmass and Basalt gearing up for possible flooding this runoff season.
The Con Man gets a visit from Lt. Colonel Dick Merrit and Seaman Dan Glidden, two retired veterans who stand for all that's good about those who have served the country. Also: a bit of a rant of flag lapel pins and taking back the lapel flag pin--and the flags--from those who desecrate it with faux patriotism.
I read in Friday’s Aspen Times that off-leach dogs may soon be allowed to run free on Smuggler Road. Judging by all of the un-leached dogs you see scampering up and down this popular hiking trail each day, you’d have thought this was already law. I wish I’d known that dogs were required to be leached. I would have strapped a billy club to my belt and made hundreds of citizen arrests by now.
When Mick Ireland and his Merry Pranksters assumed office in Aspen after the last election, I of course assumed there would be some glaring glitches and growing pains.
Not in my wildest imagination did I believe that the current regime would all but run Aspen into the ground financially in just a few short months. No exaggeration, my friends. Under the stewardship of the Bath Party, Aspen has been brought to its knees, fiscally speaking, by a group of poobahs who pooh-pooh the value of the dollar even as they burn money faster than an open fire on the Cooper Avenue Mall.
You may take this as a challenge and/or invitation to change the future toward a sustainable civilization! The USA grows by 3.1 million annually on its way to adding 100 million people in 30 years. What drives that population overload? Legal and illegal immigration! Water shortages, energy costs, gridlock, crowding, air pollution and quality of life hang in the balance and can only worsen with added population.
